


Countdown

by akamarykate



Category: Early Edition
Genre: F/M, Handcuffed Together, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-08 20:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5511266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamarykate/pseuds/akamarykate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b><i>Three. </i></b>  The number of years Hobson took off her life--and probably her career--by showing up at the preserve ten minutes after the task force.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Countdown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Amilyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amilyn/gifts).



> Takes place post-series and assumes Gary and Toni are in some kind of a relationship and that Toni already knows about the paper.

Toni Brigatti didn't think of herself as a by-the-numbers cop. Law enforcement was as much art as science; those who got caught up in statistics and rules tended to miss the quirky human details that were the keys to understanding the big picture. But sometimes counting helped her keep her focus, not to mention her sanity. 

Case in point: This whole ridiculous afternoon.

* * *

 ** _Six._** The number of calls Hobson had made to the not-as-anonymous-as-the-mayor-wanted-the-public-to-believe-it-was Gang Activity Hotline since early that morning. Her scowling captain marched up to her desk just before her lunch break and waved printouts detailing every call made from McGinty's Bar in her face.

"He claims there's some kind of gang execution going down at the Whistler Preserve later this afternoon." Captain Banks dropped the printouts into her lap and scowled. Half the bullpen stopped what they were doing to listen. "How the hell does a Northside bar owner know that? He's your source, Brigatti. You deal with him. I'm not going to scramble an entire task force on the word of a known crackpot."

 _Ten, nine, eight..._ She counted backward twice before she could answer Banks without snapping his head off. She couldn't tell her captain that the actual source was not Hobson, but his magic paper, nor that if Hobson had thought it was appropriate to make himself her source in this instance, he would have called her and not the hotline. Maybe he finally understood it wasn't good to pull her in on every police-related story he thought he had to fix; maybe she'd finally made him understand what could happen to her job if her colleagues found out he was more than just a source.

"With all due respect, sir, Hobson has proven to be reliable more often than not," she told Banks. "If he says something's happening there, it's happening."

"We have devoted too much time and manpower to false leads in that quagmire already. It's not even CPD's jurisdiction."

"But sir, if there really is a gang execution, you know the forest rangers can't handle it." Toni kept her expression solemn and steady. If she so much as blinked, she'd lose Banks completely. "Shouldn't the task force at least be on alert?"

"Not until we have evidence." Banks seemed to realize Toni wasn't going to back down on this one; his scowl eased a fraction as he scanned the bullpen. He lowered his voice. "Talk to Hobson. If he can prove something's going on, I'll consider alerting the task force. Otherwise, it's a no-go."

* * *

 ** _Five._** The number of bodies Hobson swore they were going to find in the preserve late that afternoon if no one intervened.

"I understand this is real," Toni told him, whispering to keep her voice from bouncing off the walls of the bathroom. It was the only place she could make this call without Winslow, Armstrong, and every other cop and criminal in the bullpen overhearing. "But the thing is, I can't do anything about it without some kind of proof. Your story have any names? Motives? Anything remotely useful?"

"I got a tattoo."

She snorted. "Of what, your cat?"

"Not me! On one of the bodies. It says there was a tattoo, some kind of bug, like an ant or a beetle."

There was a new gang infiltrating the South Side, drug runners from Bolivia who used a _winchuka_ as their symbol. A blood-sucking insect was oddly appropriate, given the chaos they'd brought into the city, but it didn't seem like a detail that should be in the newspaper. "Why the hell would we release that information?" 

"You didn't. I mean, CPD didn't. The paper interviewed the kids who found them. They're not even teenagers. They went for a bike ride and stumbled across a bunch of half-dug graves and the bodies laying alongside them. Do you know how traumatic that could be? If you won't do something, I will, because I'm not going to let a bunch of kids get mixed up with people who would do that."

"Neither am I." He ought to know her better than that. He _did_ know her better than that. "Why didn't you call me in the first place?"

"You keep telling me not to interfere with your job! Besides—" He broke off with a barely audible gulp.

"What are you not telling me?"

"The bodies were new, okay? Dead an hour or less when the kids found them. The only other thing the article says is that all other forms of quick ID had been removed from the bodies. Which I'm guessing means they cut off the fingers, which is what makes me think of the drug gangs down in that part of the city, so I called the Gang Activities Hotline."

"But you didn't tell them about the bug tattoo or the fingers?" 

"How was I supposed to explain how I knew that?"

"It's an anonymous hotline, Hobson!"

"Oh, come on, we both know better than that. The fourth time I called, they asked how I knew anything if I was at a bar on Illinois Street."

And yet, he'd called back twice more, because he wasn't going to let a bunch of kids see something upsetting. "I guess it's a good thing it's not, or they wouldn't have come to me to figure out what the hell to do with you. Don't worry. I'll take care of it." She'd figure out something to tell the task force, though she wished she had a little more than three details that no innocent person could know until a few hours from now. Unless she told them about Hobson's magic paper. Which would take more time and more power to convince than she had. "One way or another," she added, half to herself.

"You're not going down there, are you? I don't want you getting hurt."

"What you want has nothing to do with it. I'm the only one listening to you at this point so I'm the one who has to do something. And I _will_ , so you just stay put. You've done your part." Given that he knew the approximate time of death, she wouldn't put it past him to go down there right now and try to stop the murders in the first place. 

"Yeah, that's what Marissa keeps telling me, but I can't let this happen. No matter who they are, nobody deserves this."

"Would you listen to her for once? You _have_ done something. Go fix a flat tire on a school bus or whatever else your paper's telling you to do. I have to get on this."

"Brigatti? Don't hang up." His voice was softer, the rounded vowels more pronounced, which meant there was something he wanted to say. Something less businesslike than the rest of their conversation had been. 

She wasn't sure she wanted to hear it, but still, her snapped, "What?" came out more harshly than she'd intended.

"Just be careful, okay?"

"I'll do my job. Like I do every day."

She counted five seconds, five long seconds with so much left hanging in the air between them, before he said, "I know you will. Thanks."

* * *

 ** _Four._** The number of times in the past month the CPD/State Patrol/Cook County Forest Preserve Police Joint Task Force had searched the Whistler Forest Preserve looking for victims of gang-related violence based on tips that bodies were being dumped there. None of the searches had produced results. It was also the number of favors Toni had to call in just to get an audience with Daniel Gutierrez, the head of the task force, to convince him to go down there again. She'd catch hell on toast for not going through Banks, but she knew by the time she would have convinced him, the executions would have taken place. Better go directly to the source. 

If she had to, she'd go down there alone. But as annoying as she found Hobson's overactive concern for her, it wasn't entirely unfounded. She wasn't going up against a Bolivian drug cartel on her own if she could possibly help it.

It took forty-seven minutes to convince Gutierrez to mount an another search of the preserve. In the end, she constructed a cotton candy fable made of the thin spun sugar of Hobson's newspaper story and her own hot air.

"I have an informant. Spanish speaker, but he doesn't advertise it, so he overhears stuff he's not supposed to. He was golfing on the course near the preserve and heard some guys in the clubhouse whispering about it."

"They have been getting bold. Don't seem to think anyone in this city speaks their language." Gutierrez considered her from behind narrowed brows, with a side glance at the computer where he'd pulled up her personnel file. "This is out of the blue, Detective. From what I can see on your record, you're more involved with robbery and white collar crime than the kind of stuff this task force tackles."

"This task force" meant men. Lots of macho Rambo wanna-bes. She knew the type from her years with the US Marshals. "If you're looking at my record, sir, you'll also see that I have a pretty high solution rate. I don't follow dead-ends. This is real." She took a deep breath, pushed in close, and nodded at the wall of photos off to the side, a handful of enlarged mug shots that must be the task force's targets. "My informant heard them talking about taking off fingers and _winchuka_ tattoos."

Gutierrez looked over at the wall while Toni held her breath, counting up to thirty before he finally said, "Okay. I'll take some men down there. But you're coming, too. I want you to see what it is we're dealing with in that godforsaken stretch of forest. Place gives me the creeps in broad daylight."

There was no way he'd go if she wasn't willing to put herself and her story on the line. "Sir, I'd be happy to."

* * *

 ** _Three._** The number of years Hobson took off her life--and probably her career--by showing up at the preserve ten minutes after the task force.

At least he had the grace not to show himself in front of Gutierrez and the half-dozen men he'd brought with him: two CPD detectives, two officers from the Cook County Forest Preserve Police, and two state troopers. If he'd done that, he would have killed her career in three damn seconds. 

Instead, just as they had all started single file along a trail that was barely visible in the late-afternoon shadows, she nearly tripped over something fluid and furry, something that let out an indignant and all-too-familiar yowl. Gutierrez flashed her a glare. He'd called for silence, hoping to surprise whoever owned the souped-up Cadillacs parked in the lot on the edge of the preserve.

"Sorry," she whispered. "Just a cat."

A cat that had skittered off the path but sat watching her from under a shrub. Gutierrez saw it. "Strays. Just what we need." He shrugged and followed his men. Toni started to do the same. Yes, she knew the cat, but this was no time for a detour. She'd taken three steps when a hand reached out from behind a tree and yanked her off the path. 

She bit back a yelp of indignation. The smell of his leather bomber hit her a split-second before she made out his face in the dappled gloom. "Hobson, what the hell?" 

"Just listen, okay? The paper changed after I talked to you." He pulled her deeper into the trees and shoved his copy of the _Sun-Times_ under her nose. The light might have been bad, but she didn't need much to make out the bold headline: "Three Cops Gunned Down by Bolivian Drug Lords."

"Shit!" Toni turned back for the path, but Hobson wouldn't let go. "I have to get to them before—"

"You can't. You're one of the cops who gets shot." His eyes were wide, his grip on her arm strangling. "I can't let you go out there."

"If it's not me, it'll be someone else. There are at least two other cops out there who need to know this, Hobson, for God's sake."

"I get that, but Toni—" His voice dropped, his eyes blazed greener than usual, and his jaw set with stubborn determination. "I can't lose you."

* * *

 ** _Two._** The number of beats her heart skipped when he said shit like that, when the walls between them came tumbling down. But she didn't have time for it right now. "You always say the paper tells you about bad things so you can stop them. I'm going to stop this."

His jaw worked again, but she saw the droop of defeat in his shoulders. She was winning this one. "I'm coming with you."

 _Seventeen thousand._ The number of ways her job was fucked if she let that happen. Also the number of ways Hobson could mess up everything if he trailed along, not to mention the number of pieces her heart would break into if anything happened to him.

Sappy thinking like that was exactly why she had to keep him out of the firefight. Her hand went to her jacket pocket and closed around the only way she could think of to stop him.

Three seconds and she had one cuff around his wrist and the other around the tree limb directly over his head. His mouth moved, but no sound came out.

"I'm saving your life here. Make one sound and you'll give us all away," she warned.

"But—"

"I'll come back for you when it's over."

"What am I supposed to do if the bad guys find me?"

"Hide behind the tree. Or climb it." She jogged off after the task force, trusting her department-issued cuffs to keep at least one of them safe.

From there, it was actually kind of fun, for law enforcement values of fun. She warned Gutierrez away from the path he was taking. They came upon the scene of the crime from behind instead of walking right into it, surrounded the little clearing where five guys were forcing another five to dig their own graves at gunpoint, and were able to force a surrender after only two shots, both of which missed their targets. It didn't hurt that the task force had two more guns than the gang, nor that thanks to Brigatti's warning, the task force members all knew to duck. They had all the gang members in custody, weapons confiscated, wrists and ankles in zip ties, in a matter of minutes. The march out of the forest took a little longer than the one going in, what with all the shuffling, and Toni was too preoccupied with keeping the kid she led along the path from falling on her to track the exact spot where she'd left Hobson. 

"Nice work," Gutierrez told her as they stood in the parking lot and watched cruisers cart the gang members off to booking. "It'll take a while to sort them all out, but it looks like one of the leaders ordered a hit on his own guys. They'll do that sometimes, sacrifice a few lackies to keep the rest in line." He shot her a half-grin. "You ever consider joining my task force? You'd be a great asset. Especially if you bring your informant."

Her informant. Whose jeep was parked in a far corner of the lot. Who she needed to collect without anyone seeing. With all the noise and shouting and the handful of shots that had been fired, he'd be going nuts by now. Well, more nuts than usual. She muttered something noncommittal at Gutierrez and slipped to the periphery of the crowd, then ducked back along the trail. It was nearly dark, but she figured if she couldn't find the exact tree, the cat would probably be out there to show her. 

* * *

 ** _One._** The number of gang members they didn't realize were still lurking in the woods. 

Toni found Hobson easily enough via his grunts as he struggled against the cuffs. "You do a shit job of keeping quiet, you know that?" she asked as she fished the key out of her pocket. "Good thing we cleared out the bad guys."

"Yeah, well, I didn't think you were coming back. Thought maybe you'd forgotten all about me."

"Thanks for your confidence." She needed to thank him for a whole lot more, like the eight lives he'd saved in the past handful of hours, not to mention the ten gang members who were on their way to lockup. But when she got close enough to unlock the cuffs, standing on her tiptoes to undo the one around the tree limb, she caught another whiff of that leather jacket, brushed up against his chest as his free hand wrapped around her arm to steady her, and was overcome by the urge to express her gratitude with something more than words. His grumpy scowl held her back, though. Gutierrez was right; this place was spooky and they were better off out of it.

"You'll have to wait until we all clear out before you go to your Jeep," she told him as she undid the cuff. Which was her undoing. When Hobson's arm came free, he stumbled into her. She registered the glint in his eyes and the wicked upturn of his mouth at the same moment she lost her balance and pitched backward. He snapped the cuff around her wrist before she hit the forest floor, then drove all the air out of her chest when he landed on top of her.

"What the hell are you doing?" she snapped when she could draw a breath. 

"Turnabout's fair play." He curled the fingers of his cuffed hand around her wrist and pinned her to the ground. "You've been threatening to use those handcuffs on me since I first met you, and every time you did I've been kinda hoping we could use them, you know, together." He brought his free hand up and cupped her cheek, brushed his thumb over her lips. Like this was some damn movie; like she wasn't about to have a sneezing fit from inhaling leaf mold. He leaned down for a kiss.

"One problem," she said just as his lips brushed hers, and God help her, it almost killed her not to give in and kiss him back.

He pulled back, his frown loaded with mischievous desire. "How's that?"

"You knocked the key out of my hand with your little stunt. The sun's going down, so unless you have a spare key in your pocket, we'll have to walk out of here like this." She didn't know whether to hope some of the task force was still around to unlock the cuffs, or that they were all gone so she'd be spared a ton of humiliation and one very awkward explanation.

"Damn." He rocked back on his heels, pulling her to sit up with him. "It can't have gone far. Which way?"

"How should I know where it went? My hand was in mid-air when you tackled me."

"I didn't tackle you!" He twisted to get his feet under himself, then took her elbow and helped her stand along with him. 

"Sure as hell felt like it."

"I was just trying to—uh—" He had the grace to look a little sheepish as he ran his free hand hand across the back of his head.

"I know what you were trying to do. You have a weird idea of foreplay, Hobson." She took a step back, scanning the ground around the tree. "No explanation we come up with is going to save my my job if we don't find that key, so will you help me look?"

"I am!" he protested as he started off in the exact opposite direction she wanted to go. "Sorry, here, let's—"

"There it is!" Toni had caught a glint of metal a couple yards away. She ducked under Hobson's outstretched arm, forcing him into an awkward turn. She bent down, reaching for the silvery bit, and came up with a gum wrapper as Hobson barreled into her again.

Which would have ticked her off, except this time they crashed onto the ground just in time to avoid the bullet that ripped the bark off the tree right in front of her.

* * *  
**_Two._** The number of shots that took out the tree branch over Toni's head. The number of times she and Hobson rolled to avoid them. The number of seconds before she realized fumbling for her gun with her wrist cuffed to Hobson's wasn't going to work. 

She leapt to her feet, yanking Hobson with her, spotted the face behind the barrel of the gun a few dozen yards away, and recognized the man from one of the photos on Gutierrez's wall. "Run!"

For once, Hobson didn't argue, didn't get in her way. Whoever was after them took two more shots, but none of them hit. For once, she and Hobson moved together, hopping over the fallen branch, skidding down a slope, and pelting into the dense, pathless growth of the forest. Somehow they dodged around and between the trees by pulling each other out of the way in a rhythm that she would have thought impossible five minutes ago.

She could hear the man crashing through the undergrowth behind them, not quite keeping pace with their mad dash. Her legs strained as the ground beneath their feet rose; she wasn't used to dealing with a lot of hills in the city and she had no idea where they were going. The quick glance she'd had of the map of the preserve before the task force had headed in hadn't really stuck. She'd figured Gutierrez had been here enough times to know his way around.

She needed her gun, but she'd have to stop to get it out of her holster, and if they stopped, they were dead. Right now their best chance was to keep distance between themselves and the shooter, and to hope someone from the task force had heard the gunshots and was on the way to help.

"Why's he shooting at us?" Hobson gasped out.

Was he kidding? "My guess is he knows I'm a cop and we broke up his party. But what do I know?"

"Here." He pulled her into an even denser growth of trees, where it was completely dark. Hiding wasn't the worst idea, so Toni ducked down along with him, shushing his grunts as she pulled their cuffed wrists to her waist and finally extracted her gun from its holster. She didn't know if she'd be able to pull the trigger like this, and shooting left-handed wasn't even an option, but she felt better with it at the ready. 

"You want me to steady your aim, Annie Oakley?" Hobson whispered in her ear. She elbowed him in the gut, and he bit back what would no doubt have been an uncharacteristic curse as the footsteps caught up to their location and slowed. She felt rather than heard Hobson's breath in her hair as he leaned in close; sensed his fingers clench into a fist to keep out of the way as she brought her free hand over to brace her cuffed wrist; pointed the barrel back the way they'd come; held her breath while she sent up a two-word prayer to St. Jude, just like Nonna Brigatti had taught her to do in the worst situations. _Help us._

The footsteps passed them, faded out, then circled back to their hiding spot, paused, and headed back in the direction they'd come from. She and Hobson let out their held breath at the same time. He tried to stand, but she yanked him back down. "Wait."

* * *

 ** _Three._** The number of minutes she counted, then counted again, until her knees were screaming to be released from their crouch. Hobson was still, miraculously, in a cooperative mood. He kept his breathing shallow and silent until she nodded and they stood together.

"We gonna make it out?" he whispered. 

It was probably a good idea to keep their voices down, in case the stray gang member wandered back their way, so she whispered back, "You're the one with the crystal ball."

"Uh, yeah, about that."

"What?"

"It's back on the ground where you chained me up."

"For God's sake, Hobson, it's not like I tied you up to the railroad tracks. I was protecting you."

"I couldn't get far down enough to reach the paper and see if you were okay!" His voice rose well beyond a whisper. "My arm still hurts from hanging up there like a slab of meat."

"At least you're still alive." They stepped out of their hiding place, but even away from the densest trees there wasn't much light left.

"So are you, thanks to the paper. We're going back for it, right?"

He couldn't possibly be serious. "Our priority right now is to get out of this forest, find your car, and get back to civilization." Somewhere that had keys, lock picks, and bolt cutters. "Do you remember the way back?"

"Do you?"

There was a long beat of silence between them. She could barely see him in what was left of the twilight, but his grimace radiated as much fear as it did consternation. "This place can't be that big," she said. "We'll just start back the way we came."

"Right."

They each took one step. In opposite directions. "Great," she muttered. She had no idea which of them was correct. "What do we do now?"

"You give me your piece, for starters," a new voice growled as a gun barrel pushed into the nape of her neck. 

Toni cut a glance at Hobson. The look on his face was the same one he'd had when he'd told her he couldn't lose her. The guy behind them must have read it, too, because he shifted his gun to his right hand and jabbed it between Hobson's shoulder blades. "Hand it over or I take him out."

As she raised their joined hands, her fingers spread wide to show they weren't on the trigger of her Glock, she tried to think of something, anything, to get leverage. "There's an entire task force searching for us," she said. They couldn't all be gone already; couldn't have missed the gunshots earlier. "You shoot us here and they'll be on you in an instant."

"That's why I'm taking you somewhere else, _chica_. Somewhere they won't hear; somewhere they won't even think to look." As he reached for her gun, his arm brushed her ear. What started as an involuntary shudder turned into a spasm, and three things happened at almost the same time: Toni threw herself back into the guy behind her, tossed her gun as far into the trees as she could, and pulled Hobson forward and around her, trying to get him out of the line of fire.

It didn't work as well as she'd hoped. The guy's gun went off, and they all fell backward together. She expected to end up sandwiched between the two men, but the one behind her jumped out of the way and her back hit a sharp rock, sending flashes of pain out to her limbs. It took her breath away, and before she could push Hobson off her and reach down for the revolver in her ankle holster, their attacker had circled around and stood in front of them, his gun barrel a few inches away, pointed right at Hobson's head. 

"No more tricks," he snarled, "or I'll waste you both right here." 

"How're you going to do that with one bullet?" It came out unbidden the moment Toni realized his gun was a Smith and Wesson revolver. Real throwback, this guy.

"You never heard of Emilio Rocha, _puta_? I can do more with one bullet than most guys can with an Uzi." He motioned them to stand, keeping the gun trained on Hobson. Still aching from her landing on the rock, Toni stumbled into Hobson, and he drew in a sharp breath between his teeth. 

"Oh, God, you're hit."

"It's just a graze," he muttered. There was a tearing scar across the upper arm of his jacket, smelling of cordite and oozing blood. "I think."

Toni glared at their captor, but he grinned in response. "Happy to do it again if you try anything. Let's go."

He motioned them to the right, where the ground angled upward. The moon wasn't more than a fingernail in the evening sky, but that little bit of light was enough to show a narrow footpath among the underbrush and the thinning trees. 

Toni started forward, silently swearing at herself and this whole stupid mess in English, Italian, and Spanish. Beside her, Hobson grunted, and she darted a glance back. Rocha had his gun pressed against Hobson's wounded shoulder. She opened her mouth to let him have a few of her curses, but Hobson wove his fingers between hers and squeezed. Toni wasn't entirely certain what the gesture meant, or why it cleared her head instead of muddling it, but it brought her back to herself and allowed her to count their advantages as they climbed the low hill. 

Rocha, who was no doubt a leader in the Bolivian gang, was on his own. His lieutenants were probably all in the squad cars on their way to jail. He didn't have her gun, and he'd fired five rounds from his own. It was a throwback, a revolver. As long as he didn't have another tucked away somewhere, he only had one bullet left. One guy, one bullet. 

Against Toni and Hobson. There were two of them. Sure, they were hampered by the handcuffs and Hobson's wound, which she couldn't think about too closely or she'd lose her head again, but they did outnumber him. If she could get to her spare revolver, she'd have more bullets at her disposal as well. She just had to wait for the right moment. One where Rocha's single remaining bullet wasn't about to go into Hobson.

But when they reached the top of the rise and saw where they were, her stomach gave a lurch. The land dropped away in a bluff, fifteen feet down to the churning muck of the Calumet River. "Turn around," Rocha said, and in the instant it took her to swallow down the urge to smack the triumphant smirk off his face—she'd dislocate Hobson's already wounded shoulder if she tried—she read exactly what his plan was, and realized one bullet was all he needed.

* * *

 ** _Four._** The number of minutes it took the average adult to drown.

Rocha stepped closer, forcing them both to the edge of the bluff. His plan must have registered with Hobson just a moment after Toni figured it out, because his fingers squeezed Toni's even tighter. Rocha didn't have to shoot them both. One deadweight would drown the other. Bodies didn't float until they started to decompose.

 _Three._ The number of seconds it would take them to fall into the river.

Rocha's feral grin curled. He was actually enjoying this, the weasel. Toni scrambled to think past the numbers marching through her brain, past counting the minutes—or seconds—they had left. Technically, they had an advantage over Rocha, but she would need help, and possibly divine intervention, to get to it. She hoped St. Jude was still listening.

 _Two._ The number of breaths Toni might be able to suck in while they fell. How long she could hold those once she hit the water was anybody's guess.

The revolver in her ankle holster was their best chance, and she had to take it. But Hobson had to work with her to make it happen. Without taking her eyes off Rocha, she twisted her hand so their palms were touching and scraped her index finger down his palm, toward the ground. They had to crouch down at the exact same moment if there was any hope of her reaching her gun. She watched in her peripheral vision, hoping for a faint nod. A blink. Anything. After an agonizing second, he shut his eyes and gave a resigned tilt of his head. 

The guy was stubborn as a donkey. The gesture had to mean he understood. 

_One._ The number of bullets Rocha had left. The number it would take to kill Hobson and send him falling into the river, where he'd sink like a stone and take Toni with him. The number of chances they had to get out of this.

Rocha pressed his gun barrel into Hobson's forehead, laughed at his flinch, then took a step back. His aim never wavered, but it was Toni he looked to. He wanted to see her reaction when he killed Hobson. " _Adios, puta._ "

He pulled back the trigger. Toni dropped down, stretching her fingers for her gun. But her arm was yanked back in the instant the shot went off and she fell, _they_ fell, crashing into the water before she had time to draw any breath at all.

* * *

There were no numbers under the water. No colors, no light. Nothing but the heavy drag on her arm, the choking wet muck of the most polluted river in the state, the tangle of weeds that seemed to reach out and grab her legs no matter how hard she kicked. 

There was no time down here; she didn't have minutes or seconds left. She just had the hand chained to hers and a last moment for awareness and regret before she'd be forced to open her mouth and draw in a lungful of water. Maybe Hobson had it easier. If the bullet had caught him in the head, he wasn't conscious; if it was in the chest, he would have already sucked in enough water to drown. 

Damn it, if they were going to die together, she at least wanted to see him one more time, wanted one more breath of air before she went down. She redoubled her efforts, fighting against the current and the weeds and the drag at the end of her arm. The only way she knew which way was up was because it had to be the opposite of the way she was being pulled inexorably by Hobson's weight. But she couldn't let it happen, not like this, not the both of them forgotten and lost until weeks from now when they'd wash up somewhere downstream, downstate, down…

Down. She was headed down again, without no strength to fight toward air and light.

Light. There was light above them, a beam through the murky dark. And the same moment she saw it, the same moment she knew she couldn't hold her breath any longer, the hand chained to hers came to life, squeezing her fingers and lifting their arms toward the light. She kicked again, and this time he kicked with her instead of dragging her down. 

Maybe this was dying, going toward the light. At least she was going with someone who cared about her. It didn't hurt as much as she'd thought it would—

\--until they broke the surface of the water and sucked in air, sweet but sharp, cutting into her lungs like a thousand knives. She blinked and blinked, but the blinding light was too much, and the tornado of sound beating overhead made it impossible to hear anything else. All she could do was kick and breathe, breathe and kick, kick and breathe, while Hobson waved their raised arms at the source of the light. It pulled back a little, and she could see his face like a photonegative, a pool of shadow. 

_Three._ The number of beats her heart skipped when he mouthed her name.

"How?" She half-choked, half-yelled at him over the thrumming pulse.

"Helicopter!"

She'd meant to ask how he was alive, how either of them had survived Rocha, but relief at the realization that they really were alive overtook her, and every ounce of adrenaline left her body. She would have gone back under if Hobson hadn't caught her around the waist with his free arm and held her against him.

A rope ladder landed on the water surface and someone in a wetsuit climbed down it, hand outstretched. "Who's first?"

She tried to point at Hobson, who'd been shot at least once, and he tried to point at her, because he was that much of an idiot. But they did it with their cuffed hands, and their rescuer must have seen the issue. There was no way they were going to climb that ladder together. 

"All right then, just hold on the best you can," he shouted down at them. They wrapped hands, arms, legs around the ladder. The copter lifted them up out of the water. Toni shut her eyes against vertigo and exhaustion and concentrated on holding on tight until they were back on solid ground.

* * *

 ** _Five._** The number of keys produced when the copter deposited them in the parking lot and Gutierrez, his team, and everyone else who'd been summoned when they'd heard the shots and realized Toni wasn't with them, saw that she was cuffed to Hobson.

Most of what happened immediately after that was too much to count: the handful of blankets draped over them, the scramble of EMTs who converged on them, all of whom she shooed over to take care of Hobson; the flock of cop cars, marked and unmarked, that poured into the lot; the barrage of questions fired at her from all corners about what had happened, why she'd gone off on her own after Rocha, and who that guy they'd pulled out of the water with her was. She fielded them as best she could between coughs and shivers, choking out what she hoped was enough information to keep the questions she wouldn't be able to answer to their satisfaction at bay, until one question cut through the rest.

"What I want to know is, should we be taking this Hobson guy to the hospital or to jail?"

"Hospital!" Fueled by a new burst of adrenaline, Toni jumped off the gurney they'd forced her to sit on and grabbed the front of Gutierrez's shirt. "He saved my life. He saved all our lives, and if it wasn't for him, you wouldn't have Emilio Rocha in custody." She nodded to the left, where the Preserve Police officers who'd flushed Rocha out of the forest were forcing him into the back of a squad car. "Nobody's taking Hobson to jail, you hear me?"

Gutierrez let out a befuddled laugh and stepped back, hands up. "Jesus, Brigatti, take it easy. I'm just trying to figure out how you ended up swimming in the Little Calumet cuffed to your informant."

"Informant?" Captain Banks emerged from the melee surrounding them. "Is that what you're calling him these days?"

"Sir," Toni started, but a coughing fit overtook her. 

Banks picked up the blanket that had fallen when she'd latched on to Gutierrez and draped it over her shoulders. "Look, I know you're confused right now," he told Gutierrez. "Hobson's confusing on a good day. But if Detective Brigatti tells you he's on our side, it's the truth."

"I have a lot of questions for your detective, Banks."

"So do I." Banks cut her a side-eye that meant she'd be spending the next several days in his office. "But we know enough for now. Thanks to her, you were able to take down nearly a dozen members of a Bolivian drug ring without losing anyone on your task force. Right now I think Brigatti needs a medical check and a hazmat shower more than we need more details."

"I don't need a med check," Toni insisted, but Banks nodded toward the knot of EMTs. She couldn't see him, but Hobson was somewhere in the middle. 

"There's only one ambulance, and it's about to leave. If you don't get on it, I'll have to drive you to the hospital myself, and I'm not insured for the kind of trouble that seems to follow you."

"Sir, I—" Toni stuttered to a stop, too much like Hobson for her own comfort. Banks knew exactly what he was doing, but she didn't know how to thank him in front of Gutierrez. 

"Go on," Gutierrez finally said. "We'll sort it out in the morning."

She didn't need to be told twice. Well, not _more_ than twice, anyway. She pushed her way through the EMTs to find Hobson, who sat shivering and shirtless while they bandaged his arm. He insisted he didn't need to go to the hospital, he'd be perfectly fine, he was a quick healer.

"How many times was he shot?" she asked the EMT dressing his wound, a woman who couldn't have been more than two or three years out of college.

"Just once that we can see, ma'am."

 _One._ There was only one gunshot. It was one too many, but he wasn't going to die on her.

"I told you, it's just a graze," Hobson insisted.

Toni lifted an eyebrow at the EMT. She shrugged. "No sign of penetration, but it needs to be thoroughly disinfected and checked out by a doctor."

"Not to mention he lost consciousness for—" Toni broke off, blinking. She'd stopped counting underwater. "I don't know how long. Or _how_ ," she added pointedly at Hobson, "but he was definitely out of it for a while there. Besides, he's long overdue for a head check."

"Oh, come on, Toni."

"Do I need to cuff you to this gurney to get you to the hospital?" she asked, dangling her handcuffs from one finger while she clutched her blanket around her. She really was freezing, damn it. 

He stopped whining long enough to flash a quick grin, which reassured her more than any medical check that he was going to be okay. Eventually. "Depends. You coming with me?"

She glanced back over her shoulder and saw Banks, Gutierrez, and a handful of other interested cops watching them. "Captain's orders."

The EMTs tucked blankets around Hobson and wrangled his gurney into the back of the ambulance. Toni tried not to enjoy how embarrassed and uncomfortable he looked, but after what he'd pulled out on the bluff, she couldn't help herself. 

She shooed the EMTs to the front of the rig once they had his gurney locked in, promising to keep him in line on the ride to the hospital. Maybe it was the handcuffs, maybe it was the fact that she no doubt looked like the Bride of the Black Lagoon, but they looked at each other, shrugged, and closed the door, shutting out the flashing lights, the noise, the cold, and most importantly, the curious eyes of her superiors, who would never, no matter how long they questioned her, understand what had gone down that night.

 _Two._ The number of questions she had for Hobson. 

"Why did you jump back into the river before I could get my gun?" She leaned toward him from the edge of the gurney where she perched. He had nowhere to go; he just leaned against the raised back of his own gurney and blinked owlishly at her. "And how were you knocked out, if Rocha didn't shoot you in the head like I thought he had?"

"I don't know! I remember falling, but I think I hit the water head first. As far as jumping, I thought that's what you wanted me to do." He held up his index finger and drew a line downward. "Isn't that what this was all about? Jump down there before he shoots one of us, so we at least have a fighting chance?"

"It meant duck, you idiot."

"What good was that gonna do?"

"I could have gotten my other gun out."

"What other gun?"

"This one!" She whipped her reserve pistol out of her ankle holster, making sure it pointed away from Hobson. Water dripped off it onto the ambulance floor.

"How was I supposed to know you had two guns?" He shivered and tried to pull his blanket closer, but it was already straining across his chest.

"Why wouldn't I? What kind of cop do you think I am?"

"The best kind!"

"Well at least we agree on that much," she muttered. The ambulance started rolling, rumbling along like the familiar rhythms of their argument. Or whatever it was they were doing. "Nobody else will once I get done trying to bullshit my way out of this with Banks and Gutierrez."

"I'm sorry. I swear it, Toni, but I didn't know what else to—" He broke off, coughing, and she realized how absolutely pale he was. Not as pale as he would have been if—a wave of residual panic made her grip the gurney rail so hard her palm hurt.

"Are you okay?"

"Y—" He coughed again, but nodded through it. Toni leaned in closer, wondering if she should alert the EMTs up front. 

"You're not okay, and I wish you'd stop saying you are. God, when we fell, I thought he'd shot you in the head. I thought I'd lost you, and I—" The truth of what she was about to say froze her.

"You what?" he whispered, low and hoarse.

He'd had the guts to say it. Why shouldn't she? She ran a finger along the red mark the cuffs had left on his wrist. Not once, not even under water, had it occurred to her to try to force her wrist out of the cuff connecting them.

 _Three._ The number of beats her heart pounded before she formed the words.

"I can't lose you, Gary."

Then, because she didn't want to talk anymore, because she couldn't think of a single, blessed thing to say, she kissed him. They were both soaked and shivering; they both smelled like the stankiest river in Illinois, but the kiss was sweet and warm, a different kind of drowning.

 _Four._ The number of times she'd kissed him before, undercover and not. The number of seconds this kiss, the one after she'd finally admitted how she felt, took to turn her entire world upside down. 

His hand came up to cup the back of her head, and he kept it there, steady and right, when they pulled apart.

"You're not going to," he promised.

The second kiss lasted considerably longer. But who was counting?


End file.
